Picking the wrong admin-type to hold the reins while he's gone, hasn't entirely been his fault either.
No. But now that he's become re-engaged allowing that situation to continue would be.
I have only felt at home there in one small period since rejoining in the posting. We all know when that period occurred. I was so pleased of the progress that was made in that time frame
I remember that well. Some may recall that I worked very hard to try and bring that about, trying to use the good relationship I had with Gwen to gently and patiently keep her moving in the right direction on things like the board upgrade and the automated registration....
But as far as I was concerned, she tanked that almost immediately with her arbitrary decision on the editing time limit.
Yes, I took that
very personally. Not only because it created a problem for me because of the way I post, (posting quickly and then coming back later and correcting misspellings, typo's. typing the same word twice, etc. I make a lot of these types of mistakes, especially in longer posts) but also because of the fact that she lied to me for over a week during which time she kept assuring me that it was a glitch that she would fix as soon as she had the time to do it. (In retrospect I no longer believe she was lying to me about that; I think she fully intended to fix it when she initially told me she would, and was persuaded not to by her buddies behind the scenes...definitive proof that she was now definitely allowing her personal friendships affect her decisions as admin.)
But it soon went
far beyond the personal level. First, it was an insult to every single poster on the board, because the decision presumed that every person there was dishonest enough to go back and make substantive changes in what they had said, when it was clear that neither she nor editec, (the only one applauding the decision...Steve wasn't posting at that point) had a single shred of evidence that
anyone had
ever done such a thing. (Indeed the only one's who's honesty was seriously in question was hers and that of her two buddies)
It was a "solution" to a completely non-existent problem that existed only in the paranoid minds of her two amigos, and she, in her role as admin had decided to yield to their wishes. Prior to this, despite the fact that I had accused her of being dishonest and even crazy in her defenses of Steve as a poster, I had on a number of occasions
vociferously defended Gwen (much to the consternation of some) against the charge that she was allowing her personal likes and dislikes affect her decisions as admin (as had Joe Guy) because I simply didn't see any evidence of it. But
this was incontrovertible, undeniable evidence to me that she had now crossed that line, and that was
completely unacceptable as far as I was concerned.
She further completely showed her ass with her laughably ridiculous explanation that she had done it to somehow honor Gar's wishes. (She pulled this howler out of her butt just a couple of days after she had gone on at some length about how Gar had abandoned the board and she had ridden to the rescue)
But the absolute last straw for me came when we held a poll on the issue and the results overwhelmingly rejected her position, (I forget the exact vote, but I recall that going back to no editing time limit had the most votes, with a 24 hour limit closely behind, and her decision being supported by only a couple of votes) and her response was to say that her decision still stood, and that "being admin sometimes means doing things that are unpopular". (Of course that's also when editec started touting the sock puppets canard...An idea he cooked up because he had been handed his ass on a whole series of lopsided polls.)
That did it for me. That's when I changed my sig line and decided that as far as I was concerned, she had an attitude that was completely unsuited for the role she was in.
The
appropriate thing for her to have said at that point would have been something like, "Well I disagree with this, but I'm clearly in the minority here. So since the the overwhelming consensus is for either a 24 hour limit or no limit, how about we set it at say, 48 or 72 hours?" And that would have been the end of the issue.
But instead, she had clearly decided to use this issue as an opportunity to say, "This ain't the members board, it's
mine . I'm the boss here, and I'll run this place as
I see fit, screw what any of you think. Anyone who doesn't like it can go fuck themselves." (Which by the oddest of coincidences, just
happened to be the attitude editec was publicly calling for her to take.) In short, she used this issue to send the clear message that she was the dictator of the CSB. ("assisted" in her decision making process by Steve and editec..The bottom line is that a board run solely by Gwen in reality means a board run exclusively to please those two...personally I want no part of that. )
Now that she had "crossed the Rubicon" and clearly and publicly established the principle that she was the dictator, and that she and she alone would decide board policy, dropping all pretense that (in the absence of the board's owner) this was a board where the decision making process rested with the consensus of the membership, it was also clear to me that so long as she remained in sole control of the board it would just be a matter of time before she did it again...and again...and again...
This is why, (as I said earlier) I think it would be a
really good symbolic thing for Gar to announce that in light of the clearly expressed collective view of the membership, he was lifting the one hour editing limit, and then to lift it. This would be a clear signal that he was serious about restoring his "our board" concept that Gwen so thoroughly trashed.
...and Geeks tweak. He came back and the first thing he wanted to do was tinker. You can't blame him for that, it's his nature. But he wanted to tinker amongst friends, and he's mentioned that, that the feud is frustrating to him. It's just not something he knows exactly how to tweak like he does code. 
